Tanisha (name changed) has been married for seven years into her second marriage. Her earlier marriage had not last long enough and before she could realize that she has been married, she was out of the wedlock.Her husband of her first marriage , could not take to her low mood and low self esteem.He called it quits in one years time. She had met Sunit (name changed ) through the family social circle. Sunit an employed engineer , despite his having divorced her wife from his first marriage had appealed to the family so much that without any kind of verification etc., Tanisha had been married off to him . It was all rosy picture for the first few months of hr new marital life . She had moved with him to another city where he was posted on his job. Soon she had been blessed with a baby. Things started to go wrong the moment she had announced her being pregnant to her husband. Sunit found it difficult to continue in the job he was holding. He quit the job .They moved back to his parents home.They have both become dependent on his parents meager income of rentals and pension. Tanisha later learnt that Sunit’s earlier divorce had happened on account of his inability to continue into any job for longer period.

Sunit has since been out of job for seven years. Each day begins with a fight for the financial needs which have been by now been mounting to unmanageable levels. their daughter is five years old. Her school expenses too have been rising up every year and will go up further ( her current school expense is being managed by Tanisha’s parents form their pension funds) .

It is obvious Tanisha has to bear the brunt of her husband being unemployed . She is mistreated by her mother in law too. Tanisha has been moving forth between her parents house and her in laws like a bouncing ball very frequently. The last time she had been away for over six months ( this being longest period of her leaving her husband ). Yet she comes back every time .Every month it happens either she is told to leave her in laws’ place by her mother in law or her husband or she would leave in a huff after the fight vowing never to come back . Her life goes on in spite of the mental, physical , emotional , economic and social abuse.Neither her parents want her to leave her husband nor is she confident enough to lead her life independently.

The relationship that Tanisha has been undergoing is a regular feature in her life, as she has been treated very badly in childhood by some of the family members, and again by some of the boy friends in her teens when she was into college.

Relationship abuse is the most common form of psychological, abuse people indulge into to hold a sway over others or allow others to hold a sway over them. It is a kind of psychological exploitation by the perpetrator . At the same time it is also an unnecessary comfort area the victim gets into refusing to come out of it.

It has been observed that Women ( irrespective of the fact that they are married or not ) stay in abusive relationships due to a combination of low self-esteem, still low self confidence ,lack of family support ,poor other alternatives . This is also compounded by the time and efforts they have invested to rectify the current relationship, find the research recently conducted . The results indicate that 88% of women continue their relationships with their abusive partner over longer periods. The women just do not have the courage to move out of the relationships and leave their partners. even after having been abused over longer relationships , many women ( many men too ) with lack of self esteem and lack of self confidence find it hard to leave their partner. They just prefer enduring the abusive relationship having lost all their trust in their own capabilities.

The study points out that only a small percentage of 12% of the women in this study who were abused — psychologically or physically — left their partner . This happens when such women feel they are not worthy of bringing about any change in their status .

The low self-esteem in women can be the result of having undergone childhood abuse — which can instill fear of the unknown change .Doubts of self empowerment can raise their tolerance for abuse, and neglect . Such women have reported at least one incident of abuse in their early life , whether physical or psychological.Psychological abuse included things like, “touching inappropriately by a friend or a relative”, “ being bullied in their childhood”, ” being called fat or ugly”, ” having been ignored by parents, guardians, or“ being hurled insults by teachers , tutors, classmates or companions “.Most of the abuse the study indicates are psychological.

The research points out that : “…women experiencing high levels of psychological distress may not feel efficacious in their ability .The results showed that 88% of women were still with an abusive partner over longer periods unwilling to leave their partners.”Childhood abuse has been an important contributory factor,“…women who were abused in childhood are more satisfied with their current relationships than women who are not abused in childhood.

“It is possible that women with childhood abuse histories are more satisfied in their relationships than women without childhood abuse histories because they have more tolerance for mistreatment based on early life experiences and resulting interpersonal experiences ”, the researcher points out ,“…the more psychological abuse women are exposed to, the more energy and effort they put forth to resolve the conflict, thus leading to increases in perceived investment.”

“The more time , effort, emotions and experiences women invest in their relationship, the more likely they are to stay in such abusive relationships” , and hence their could be many Tanisha’s enduring abusive relationships.

Have you of late been feeling deep in the woods ? Do you feel the world is out to get you? Do you really feel the next johnny is better than you? Do you want to just lie down and not look at the world in the day light, with the curtains drawn and the lights off all the times?The day to you just seems to drag on… the night becomes all the more difficult and sleep seems to have eluded you for many days . Do you look at the world a real queer place with all of the folks giving you advise to go and do something about it ?

Do you :

beat Yourselves up over silly mistakes,

feel always sick and tired on account of not sleeping well,

constantly grapple with unwanted thoughts running through your minds all the time

feel tormented with traumas and pains of life’s doings and undoings .

The shrink might say you have a depression and a mood disorder . The others would simply be calling it an inability to face the stresses of the world and may associate to anxiety attack. some could have compassion for you or some could just call you a lazy buff. But do you really feel all that advise is necessary when all you are doing is being comfortable in the discomfort of the inertia and the negation of the self.

But is that not a fact that you Do want to feel truly good, only if some one could help you overcome this inertia of depression ? The visits to the psychiatrists do not seem to have helped much, as he does nothing but prescribes a different medicine every time you go to him.

Here is a simple remedy that can help you overcome the negativity that seems to have entered your mind and life.

You make an attempt to Accept yourself and feel a profound sense of warmth and self-importance. No I am not advising you to become a megalomaniac but asking you to feel the powers that be within you to resurrect your life .You have some magnetic power that makes you unique , that makes you , “ME”. Identify this “ME” and make all efforts to become “ME”.

We would often look at others and not only compare ourselves with others but also be always be busy in the process of becoming others. but would becoming others make us happy or satisfied ? no not at all . The more we look outward towards others ,the more we get dissociated with the self the real “ME”, that always wants to excel and be recognised. But the rat race of becoming others, the eagerness of doing like the others do pushes this “ME”, to the unknown depths of ignominy.

We regularly conduct Preksha Meditation classes at Alka Mansik Pramarsh Foundation and our experiences reveals that the meditation of self-acceptance makes people gain positivity and happy state of mind which can not be compared to others because in this there is no , “other”. The learning of the self can definitely be compared to the learning of the new things and being part of something bigger, some sacred and celestial happiness and satisfaction.

If you want to feel this , self-acceptance is the habit you need to inculcate gradually in your mind.

Start by writing all the positive things about you on a paper , even if you feel there is nothing positive that you can write about you just write the following statement:

I am a powerful person I have the power of mind .

Continue writing a full page ,then meditate on this, you will gradually start feeling good ?

YOU MUST Accept Yourself in the positive fashion and that will help you overcome barriers to self-acceptance .Come and learn with us the daily self acceptance practices that result into psychological and emotional healing.

Ramneek kapoor,Clinical Psychologist and family Therapist,Science of living ,Preksha Meditation expert.

Many a times, life becomes a difficult hill to climb. It poses so many uphill climbs and downhill slides full of rocks, pebbles and stones that the mind gets boggled and goes numb. But then the same life also presents the challenges that men and women will love to surmount. Has the mankind not been pleased by defeating any and every obstacle that comes in its way to the progress of life. Can we imagine for a minute the sense of achievement and the heavenly bliss and the excitement Sherpa Tenzing and Edmund Hillary must have experienced when they had hoisted the national flags of their respective countries after having reached the top of the Mount Everest? Did they for a minute ignore the obstacles and the difficulties they had faced while climbing .or for that matter does Bachhendri Pal not remember the avalanches and the snow storms when she dares to conquer the mountains again. I am sure she must be remembering all the tough times, the turbulent weather and the impediments, the life threatening moments and the life saving graces while climbing those daunting mountains again And again. It is the thrill of overcoming the difficulties and the obstructions
But how many of us can look at life as a challenge and take a vow every time we go downhill to bounce back again. We mortals get overawed and deterred by the insignificant obstacles conjured and made big by our fearful minds. We do not try with full faith in ourselves and complete trust in God almighty, because of the negativity controlling our minds. The negativity forces us to negate our own powers, our own objectivity and positivity. The result is that we concede and give in even before the skies above could give us the results of our sincere efforts. Just think of those Olympians who having lost the chance to win a gold medal in one Olympics , do not give up but continue with their practice for next four years with the hopes and determination that next time they will make it.
These truths are not mere stories to motivate but experiences to be shared with men and women to tell them that you still can do it. Just get up and get moving the mountain top waits for you .

-2 –

Do we really remember how often had we fallen when we learnt to crawl, walk and then run in our childhood? Most probably not because we had all along been focusing on the organic growth of our lives when we moved from infancy to childhood to young age. Each time we would fall while learning to pedal a bicycle, we would come back with a determination to succeed this time and eventually we learnt the tricks. Remember we would then enjoy the same trick of pedaling our tiny bicycles with both our hands free from the handles of the bicycle. But what kept us going after each fall was the encouragement we would get from the protective hands of our parents or elder brothers and sisters . Their pepping up always encouraged us to do better.

We now wonder as to where has this pep talk that could tell us to get up and get going vanished . Believe me it has not vanished anywhere. It exists today also . Possibly today it can be seen in the eyes of our young sons and daughters. Just look into their eyes and onto their confident faces when they see their parents fighting out the challenges of life with yet another strong determined mindset and bounce back after having had a set back in life. The support system of doing better once again can be found in the comforting words and gestures of the life partners and good friends when they tell you to forget the vagaries of life and try an alternative route that could take you to greater glory of success.

I once saw a convoy of ants moving in a very disciplined manner in a straight line to their hive. The ants were lead by the leader of the pack and they were all running to reach the comfort of their hive after a day’s hard work . They were clutching small tit bits into their tiny mouths, to be hidden away from the other predators. Out of sheer curiosity and to check whether I could disturb and dissuade the disciplined run of ants’ convoy I just sprinkled a few drops of water on the floor . I had expected ants to give up going in the direction that they had been following.I was sure they would now get lost as the straight line that they had been following behind each other had been disturbed. But to my utter dismay all the ants instead of getting lost or dissuaded from their path became more determined to reach their destination. They would just take a detour away from the wet patch on the floor and rejoin their companions who had moved ahead of them . A few of the ants even climbed the wall high up to avoid the water thrown by me on their route and after covering a good height will climb down to join the straight line of their friends moving forward.

Life beckons us to move ahead in the same way. Come highs or come lows the route to glory should never be abandoned .We must find a detour every time we come across the obstacles and continue our journey to the destination. There are enough support systems available who tell us to get up once again and get going. The caring hands of God the Almighty are always with us to protect us from any fall that we might comprehend or be apprehensive of. Let us just get up and get going. Success is just round the corner……..may be just a step ahead.

3

Mankind has always courageously and fearlessly faced all kinds of extremities, annihilation, natural calamities and man-made disasters. Many a civilizations have gone down the mounds of earth or into the annals of fire on account of atrocities committed by one tribe over the other. Many a nations have been virtually eliminated from the surface of this earth by the cruel hands of time. Yet man has existed and grown from the pre-stone age to the modern jet age due to his resilience, the stronger willpower, steely determination and the fortitude to get back yet stronger and more powerful. The human minds have been made all the more potent and effective by each stroke of adversity. In this entire game of playing hide and seek with death and destruction man has never stopped empowering himself with the inbuilt armament of resolve and tenacity. The recent upheavals of financial misfortune are nothing when we all think of the wealth each nation possesses today. We today have in abundance the wealth of young and inquisitive minds, the wealth of shared knowledge and the wealth of international cooperation in construction and rebuilding of the disintegrating institutions. What we need to have is the faith in humanity, the love for individual and the respect for human capacity to put back in place the lost kingdoms.
I am reminded of a small incident of my early childhood days when we used to live in houses with lots of half open ventilators in each room. Young birds and sparrows will find it very convenient to build their nests in small nooks and corners of the rooms in our home flying in and out of the half open ventilators. Their chirping and singing the bird tunes always sounded like a sweet music to our adolescent ears. But these birds were also creating a nuisance for our mother who used to be very meticulous and fastidious in maintaining cleanliness all around the house. Each season it used to be a constant fight ensuing between the young birds and our mother. Our mother will direct the servants almost once a week to throw away many kind of tidbits, the cloth cuttings, the broomsticks and the small paper shreds that the birds would collect to build their nests behind the curtain rods, the ceiling fans’ canopies and the top of the wooden cupboards. The poor birds will look at my mother and her retinue of servants pitiably and sadly asking for some kind of mercy to spare their small worlds so that they could lay their eggs and bring into this world their inheritors. But to no avail. Does that mean that the birds will fly away? No way, these birds will stay put in our house and with a re-determination will begin bringing in more material discarded by the denizens of the man’s land to build with it their nests again. Within a few hours, next morning these birds would build their shell again and look chidingly at our mother. Eventually mother had to give in and allow them to stay in there till their youngest ones were hatched out of the eggs and had grown strong enough to fly out of the windows. She would in due course start the same exercise all over again with other pairs of birds the next season.
But what message my immature mind could understand and imbibe was that a small frail bird had more firmness, persistence and tenacity than many of the humans. It did not get discouraged. It would not get disheartened and depressed even when her or his entire world had been destroyed. It would simply get up and get going without giving the catastrophe a second thought, because it knew that the life is too short and beautiful to be allowed to be destroyed in dismay and despair. One must just get up and get going …………..

4

Practically there is no one who has not been hit hard by the recession. Its vagaries can be seen from the dwindling crowds on the shop floors of shopping malls, to the shortening of the queues on the airlines check-in counters, to the shrinking of the kitchen and household shopping of many families on account of their reduced incomes. The economies of not only the businesses but even the common families have gone hay wire. The salary slips suddenly vanishing lead to bank balances and savings vanishing in no time , but giving in to the pressures and adopting a passive attitude can further aggravate the problem and one can get into depression. So what do we do ? Many of us will obviously pose this question .
The best thing that we can do is to take it in the correct perspective that it is time to either upgrade or to diversify our skills . There must be many things we had not done in life before but have always talked about doing , to our friends and families. It could be expanding on some hobby, taking to some other profession related to our skills or it could be even upgrading our academics . But that can be organised only if we remain positive and objective in our approach towards every thing in our life.
I have always spoken about getting into teaching in a business school to my family and friends during my long career of 28 years in marketing. Yet I did not have the courage to quit the well heeled and oiled job.Though I had been adding my own bit to the education field by writing seven books on Marketing and getting them published by the best publishers of the world , as a hobby . All this had been done during my tenure as a corporate manager. I had also picked up an additional degree in management almost ten years ago more to satisfy my curiosity about new concepts in management rather than anything else.
Recently when I had faced challenges in my corporate career, I looked at this juncture in my life as a God sent opportunity to convert my talks into practical action. I had prepared myself to take life head on and fight back the negativity of a depressing recession. The first thing that I have done is to adopt a positive attitude. This positive attitude is all prevading . I do not allow my family also to get into any kind of negative reminiscensing of the life that we have just had and left behind. The result is that I have got a great opening for myself into a profession that I had always wanted to get into i.e. teaching in a good business school. I also have another book of mine ready for release withing a week or so. It is obvious life has turned better once again. It is definitely the positive thinking that has activated the law of attraction in my life. I wish all of us get inot the positive thinking and attract the best things of our choice into our lives.
Think positive , get up and get going is all I can wish all my friends . Believe me that every good thing that you have ever wanted will start materialising the moment you turn positive. Just get going.

5

“Everest is not a mountain you climb in a day” said Krushna Patil second youngest Indian woman who had summitted the highest peak. She had said this in her interview to HT. And we got to trust and believe her because she has achieved what many cannot even dream of. Similar sentiments can be echoed for any other project that we want to achieve in our life. Our dreams and desires, our aspirations and ambitions can be achieved provided we know what we want and how do we approach life to go for it. It may not happen in a day certainly but if and when we are able to achieve this, it will give us a great high as it must have given to Krushna when she had summitted the peak for the first time.
It is an agreed fact that a positive and objective mind set is the prerequisite to high achievements in life but besides the positivity of the mind it is also the preparation of the spirit and body to put in our best of toil, sweat and tears in the achievement of any task that we set out to do for ourselves in our lives.
They say that Rome was not built in a day but they should also say that Rome was built by intelligent planning and foresight, by deploying men and material who had toiled for years together to build a town we commemorate as Rome today. The beauty of Rome obviously attracts all of the mankind today also to utter such epithets for its praise.
I am tempted here to borrow another sentence from the article of Colleen Braganza (the article appeared in Hindustan Times June14, 2009) where the author writes about the summiteers of the Mount Everest,” You do not conquer Mount Everest .The mountain allows you to climb her “. Life too allows us to live it the way we want to live. A good, healthy, peaceful life full of happiness and mirth for all. However as the mountain does not allow any climber to take to it lightly, same way the life expects some seriousness from us . The mountain wants climbers to have respect for its highs and lows, the peaks and slopes and walk over them with a climbers’ discipline; same way life too tells us to develop a healthy attitude towards the ups and downs, the stills and the movements that our day to day living brings into our folds. It wants us to adopt a salubrious attitude that displays neither overt exhilaration nor jubilation over the minor achievements nor a depressing passivity and submission to the major upheavals. The life will then expect us to get into the nascent hope of climbing yet another of its peak after coming out of the previous palate of high or low served by it to us on the platter. The climbers many a times have to strategically assess their position on way to the peak of the mountain and decide whether to stay put at one place , to move forward, or even take a step backward to let the weather clear up before they start climbing again . The same way we too have to devise our strategies to meet our career and life’s ambitions. Moving forward appears good and keeps everyone associated with us happy except possibly our healthy rivals. But it is always the stagnation or the need to take a step backward that causes ripples into the society in which we live and spend our 24 hours every day. It could either have raised eyebrows or the depressive sounds of false sympathy.
But the warriors of life and the climbers of the peaks should not pay heed to such sounds and ripples. They should rather rededicate themselves to the task of building up bridges and tunnels again to clear up their road to success and glory that life allows them to achieve .And to do that we will have to first of all take out the fear of losing out. We must not allow our minds to get colored by the elephis of suspicions and doubts on our own capabilities .We must clear all kinds of cobwebs of non achievements from our mindsets by believing that we and only we are capable of bringing magnificence and greatness back into our lives by the solemn commitment to build up our lives again.

6

In my last write up I had made a reference to presence of Elphi in our heart and mind that prevent us from shedding the fears inherited by our past misfortunes and negative experiences. The fear of losing gets steeped into our inner psyche and inhibits us from acting boldly. I had actually met Elphi in my city while it was walking on the roads. The huge pachyderm with its massive built and bulk had been ridden by a frail and emaciated looking mahout, who would once in a while poke the animal with his ankus as he prodded him to behave in the midst of chaotic traffic on the road.
More recently, these same methods were also witnessed by me in a circus where the trainer had traumatized the captured big wild predator lion to perform certain acts, which otherwise this Panthera Leo would have made a man to perform before it actually ate him up. Any how we were discussing about the Elphi, our dear friend and representative of the great lord. My animal lovers’ instinct told me to speak to Elphi and ask him as to what he had been doing in a town and why he was not in a jungle uprooting trees with his trunk or getting into any other kind of elephantine game to entertain himself because that is what a young elephant is supposed to do .
The massive mammal stopped by for a while, looked at me as if he had been sizing me up and then he glanced at the mahout who had been riding him. The elephant assured that the mahout did not have the ankus in his hands, spoke in a conspiratorial tone to me, “you seem to be a man with a very low wisdom. Do you not see that this man who is sitting on top of me carries a weapon that is mighty powerful than my entire bulk. Will he not kill me if I try to save myself and run away to jungle? Please do not ask me to do anything that could be detrimental to my health”.
“But you are so powerful, strongly built and muscular looking. This man who is riding you is only a small creature. you can throw him off your back with one little push of your trunk and may be crush him if he tries to stop you from running away to the jungle”‘, I had told the elephant while at the same time I had been motivating him to get free from the slavery of labor and toil in the town. I had wanted him to regain his lost freedom and respectability. The elephant who had been behaving in a very meek fashion under the mahout looked at me very apologetically as if he had been trying to feel sorry for his own condition.
“You can share your story with me if you want to”, I told him, and “it is possible I may be able to help you”.
“Well if you are keen to “, said the elephant to me, “but you will have to crawl along with me through this grueling traffic. I find it difficult to raise my voice for the fear of the punishment that will be awarded to me for blowing my natural trumpet in this town inhabited by humans”.
“Of course I will walk along “, I encouraged him.
“you see when I was a very small and innocent baby elephant I used to be a free bird oops sorry ….a free elephant like any other of my brethren in a jungle. I used to enjoy my pranks and baby elephant games with mud and water. I would sprinkle water over my body and then lie down into mud to again cover myself with dust so that my mother could shower more water on me with her trunk. I just loved all such mischiefs as it gave me a chance to listen to sweet admonishments of my elephant parents. But life had not been such kind to me for long. One day some friends of this mahout had come to jungle hunting for the ivory teeth and trunks of elephants. They killed lots of my relatives to gather huge catch of ivory and elephant bones. I really do not know why you humans like the bones and teeth of dead animals. Any how I really never will never understand. Perhaps someday my bones will also be ……” he left the sentence midway.
“but we were discussing about your parents “, I had wanted him to continue.
“Yes, yes, let me speak”, “My parents were also amongst those killed by the gun tottering friends of this mahout. My life however had been spared by them as I did not carry enough bones in my body and teeth in my mouth. They just bundled me into a van, after they had put me into strong iron chains, and brought me to your town. Thereafter whenever I had raised my trumpet to tell them that I wanted to go back to, my own home in the forest, they would beat me with this ankus on my forehead. This thing really hurts. Even the thought reminds me of the pain that this ankus can inflict. In addition the iron fetters that these people had tied to my tiny elephantine feet would hurt me whenever I had tried to free myself from the pole to which I had been secured.
‘Yes that happened when you were very young. Today when you have grown so big and you have a massive body and built, you can certainly get yourself freed from this slavery and go back to the place where you belong”, I talked to him in a very sympathetic mode.
“My friends from jungle also say so. But you have to understand that the fear of the ankus and the iron fetters hurting my ankles had settled deep into my heart and mind during my childhood days. The horror so settled in my brain has altered my very basic personality. I am no more an elephant even though I do look like one to you. I am happy with the state in which I had been forced to live from my enslaved childhood. Please do not disturb me any further ‘, Elphi had been trying to hide his tears of pain and sufferings.
“But let me share a secret with you”, he brought his trunk closer to my ears, as if he did not want anyone else to become privy to this secret. “I am not alone in this town. I find many of my creeds living into the very heart and minds of all the human beings in this town”.
“Well but that is impossible. I do not see any other of your creed in here and then how is it possible that such enormous living beings can get into the hearts and minds of us humans without anyone ever noticing them. You must be just befooling me”, I laughed aloud at the statement recently uttered by Elphi.
“NO I am serious. You humans carry the symbolic self created Elphis in your minds, the same way I have adopted my terror of fetters and ankus from my childhood. You get befuddled by one negative experience in your life and give up trying the same thing further. You too have taken to all kinds of negativity and self denial from the early childhood. The ghosts of past bad experiences always haunt your mankind with the result that the humans are never able to disassociate themselves from the fearful complexes .These apprehensions and doubts on your own capability given to you during your childhood and parentage, become colossal Elphis when you grow up physically , though mentally you still remain steeped in your self- woven anxieties . I think you should first try to emancipate your own creed from the massive elephants that occupy their thinking and doing faculty and then possibly I should also move out of this town and go back to my forest abode, till then let me enjoy the company of the Elphis living within all of you’.
I obviously had no reason to further cajole the biggest mammal living on the land. I knew the urgency was to ask my fellow beings to throw away the elephants of self doubt, the elephants of past bad baggage’s, the elephants of some negativity experienced in life earlier and get up and get goingwith a renewed vigor and self determination to follow and realize the dreams of their lifetimes.
7

A few of my friends while reacting to my suggestions expressed by me in my different writings that one should explore the possibility of finding avocation into new yet somehow a profession which could be related to our hobby or likings, have voiced their reservations on taking to a profession that is different from the one they had been working into for so many years. I agree with them that we may find the same difficult if not impossible on account of recession/ lack of opportunities available in the existing field as well as the new area that we may propose to enter into. However many a times we give up the effort before even giving it a genuine try. The general response from all of us for any fresh career move into the untried, unexplored and unchartered waters will be:
1. It is totally new.
2. I do not want to risk it.
3. I do not have the skills for it.
3. I have gone too old for this kind of skills up gradation.
4. Look at my age, do you expect me to take up learning again..
5. What will people say?
Yes we all agree that it is difficult to adapt to the change after having lived with a particular life style and thinking process. But it is not impossible. A man’s analytical and logical part of the thinking process has an inbuilt faculty that is always eager to learn the new and unexplored; provided we are able to challenge and awaken that faculty in each one of us and make use of the same at the appropriate time. We have always had some inherent ability and some of the skillfulness that we possess have been learnt by us out of our experiences in life, be it on the job, during the course of our study, on account of the training or at the time of the rearing of the family, man has always been learning all through his life.
The power of learning does not diminish when we grow up in number of years; on the contrary experiences earned with the passing of the age help us learn things faster. Or do we end up losing our interest in our mental development and intellectual growth because we find enough reasons to justify the kind of life that we have got used to. We do not want to create any kind of flutter or disturbance or dissonance in the easy life style that we have conveniently selected for ourselves. This reminds me of the story of a baby eagle and a poultry farmer, which I would love to share with all in my next write up.

8

The farmer on one of his morning walks had come across a small baby eagle. The baby was hungry, unfed and uncared for lying in a ditch on the road side. The farmer took pity on the small frail bird and brought him home to be reared along with the other hens and roosters he had been keeping in his poultry farm. He instructed one of the servants looking after the farm to take good care of the new entrant. “You must feed it the same food that you give to other hens and fowls so that it does not feel and think differently from the other birds in the coop”, the farmer had told the care taker. As the time passed by the young baby eagle started growing in age and physic on account of the easy availability of undemandingly obtained food at the pen. Soon the baby eagle virtually started believing that it was also the bird of the same breed that others belonged to in the enclosure of hens and roosters.
It so happened that one of the village elders, who had heard about an eagle being reared along with the chicks, had tried to caution the poultry farmer, “son you are unnecessary keeping the baby eagle trapped with other birds. You must let it fly back as it belongs to the sky. It is one of those birds that can fly across the mountains. In its flight it can make the mountains feel dwarfed in its presence. It is a bird that can go up to the Sun and look into its eyes to talk to talk to the ball of fire. Please release this eagle forthwith and let it fly”, the village elder told him.
“But Sir, we do not have any eagle in our midst. I have all the chickens in my farm and their task is to lay eggs. Even the one bird you are referring to is also a hen and soon it will start laying eggs for me”.
“If you do not believe me you can talk to the bird yourself. Even the bird will tell you that it is no eagle”, the poultry farmer told the village elder very arrogantly.
The village elder finding the farmer non responsive and arrogant tried talking to the baby eagle. “Come on you dear little birdie. You should know that you are an eagle, which can fly high into the skies. You can cross all boundaries and look down upon the earth from the heights of your reach. Please leave the pen meant for hens and chickens and fly back to the heights of the blue skies”. But to farmers’ delight and to the surprise of the village elder, the baby eagle did not come out of the coop. It looked lazily at the village elder and told him, “How can I fly. I am but only a chicken, and chickens do not fly. My task is to lay eggs when I am ready to do so’‘, it looked disdainfully at the old man who had been disturbing him from his daily slumber and went back to the enclosure built for warmth and comfort. The poultry farmer too laughed mockingly at the village elder, “see sir I had told you we do not have any eagle here’.
“Perhaps someday I may have to show the actual heights to this bird to remind and awaken the powers of flying in him”, the village elder muttered to himself as he walked away from the poultry farm.
A few months had elapsed when the same village elder happened to visit the farmer’s house on some mission again. He noticed that the baby eagle had now grown into a full grown fowl of its kind yet it did not recognize its own powers of flying. It pained to see a life worth while being wasted away like this. He avowed to himself to get the bird freed from the captivity. “I see son you still have the eagle living with the hens and roosters. It has grown fully now. You should let it go. It can take its own care. Let him go and fly back to the skies’, he pleaded to the farmer.
Perhaps you are not realizing sir that the bird is not aware of its own breed now. The bird thinks that it is only a chicken and it has lost all powers of flying. Even if I release him now it will die of hunger, or it will end up a morsel to the dogs. So let him stay back here only , happy with other hens and chickens of my farm house’, the farmer looked with a deep sense of pride at the eagle as if he was enjoying the fact that he made the bird change its mind and physic both.
“Please, you will allow me to take this bird to the roof top. I will try to just make him familiar of the height. It is possible that the altitude of the roof top may make him regain his lost touch with flying prowess “, the elder pleaded to the farmer.
The farmer who by now had been convinced of his own magical powers to turn an eagle into a chicken told the elder, “you may take him to any heights sir; this bird is no more an eagle’. And look how correct he had been proved. The heights of the roof tops failed to impress upon the eagle that it was a bird meant to fly high in the skies.
The village elder still had not given up his hopes on this. He made another request to the farmer, “I think the elevation of the roof was a little too less to convince the bird of its flying powers. A mountain summit could awaken the soaring faculty in him and I could cajole him to reach the pinnacles”.
You may take him to the peak of the Everest. It is obvious this bird had been converted by me into a domesticated poultry bird. Perhaps someday it will lay some eggs just like other birds of the cage”, the farmer said.
The village elder took the eagle to the highest point of the small hillock situated outside the village. He made the bird look upon the snow clad mount visible at a distance, the Sun shining through its glory thousands of miles away, and the blue azure skies above. “Come on son take the first step. Just spread your wings. Take the first flight. Go get into the skies and fly very very high. You must make these mountain tops feel small with your dexterity to reach the heights. Go and look into the eyes of the sun and look down upon the bliss of ignorance and unawareness. Be aware of your own strengths and make the best use of the faculty of flying given to you by lord the almighty’.
To the utter astonishment of the poultry farmer the eagle spread its wings. It thought “there is no harm in giving it a try, if the old man is insisting so much. Who knows I may be able to?”
The bird who was being encouraged by the elder now took the first flight, “come on son I know you can do it. Just fly a little bit. The rest will come automatically to you”, the village elder carried on motivating and bucking up the eagle. The eagle that had gone much above into the skies called out from there, “is this what you call flying. I will soon be back after looking into eyes of the Sun. Maybe I will also look at other stars and meteors before I return”. The eagle fluttered its wings merrily and flew into the blue skies away from the captivity of ignorance and also away from the lack of belief into its own special faculty. While each one of us can draw our own meaning from this story, a fact common to us all will apply that many a times we underestimate our own strengths and powers, but once we begin trusting in ourselves , skies too will leave way for us to forge ahead towards our mission and destination definitely predetermined by us and us alone. .
For those of us who believe that we have grown too old or that we have lost the youthful dynamism because of age, my suggestion is we should ask the Sun how ancient it is. In spite of its having been in the skies for billions of years it still shines bright every morning. We must try to borrow this from the stars above and remain young in our thinking.

9

The secret of success lives within us . It is not outside us . It is not even with some management guru, motivational speaker or soft skill expert. All the enthusiasm, the inspiration and the stimulation has to be inbuilt and power driven from within to get ahead in life. I remember the saying that the horse can simply be led to the water; it is the horses’ thirst that will make him drink water (sorry for the pun and changing the famous quote little bit). Similarly humans have to have an unquenchable craving to do well in whatever sphere we are into, in whatever circumstances we find ourselves into, this hunger to act upon and improve must always keep all of us on the edges all the time.
I am reminded of a small debate that took place almost three decades ago in a meeting with one of my not very literate clients. But it had left an indelible mark on my consciousness. During my job with one of the automotive parts manufacturing companies I used to call upon the transporters for promoting my company’s products. One of the highly successful transporters, a burly north Indian gentleman (who could hardly read or write his own name) whom I had gone to meet during my market visit , casually asked me if I knew ‘ what made a vehicle run on the road”.
My first natural quick answer to this kind of query was of course the same that you have thought of. I said enthusiastically, “why fuel of course. I mean diesel or petrol as the case may be”.
“No”, he mockingly replied.
“Then it is the driver that drives the vehicle”, I blurted out again in a hurry.
“You are only partially correct, but still you have not answered my question, while it is true that you need a driver to drive the vehicle it is not the driver who makes the vehicle run on the road”.
“Well if you want me to count the parts of the automobile that are all involved in the transmission then possibly I will have to include the engine and the tyres too. Of course how foolish I have been that I never thought of tyres. Even when I work for a tyre company. The vehicle definitely runs on tyres. See if you have a flat tyre you cannot run, so obviously you must be referring to tyres only. That is why I am here to discuss one of our new introductions”, I was very happy that the gentleman would possibly be impressed with my intelligence and the good mood that he had displayed could fetch me some business in return.
“I think we could go on counting all parts of a vehicle ,still you will not be able to point out the answer that I had been expecting from you. While all the other parts and systems of the vehicle hold equal importance; it is the speck of the small spark that is generated with the turn of an ignition key that makes the vehicle move. When this spark is not created in any system nothing moves. You have to have the small little fire within your heart also to move the convoy of your life smoothly. Just as vehicle’s movement comes to a standstill if there is no spark within the engine, the same way human life too becomes meaningless if a man does not have some kind of spark in his heart, be it to run his business or to work in a job”.
‘How clearly you have explained to me in simple words, what my literate mind could not even guess. I do agree with you that it is the spark within that makes everything move. The life itself draws its force from the round of pious fire we look at every morning from the east of the skies. We should all have the same fire within us. The speck of fire so caused will keep us constantly energetic powerful and potent, always eager to put in pour best and keep the cycles of life moving in whatever situation we may be in”.
“In fact tougher the situation brighter should be the spark within us so that the rough weathers can be beaten with our own internal energy”, said the trucker to me.
The words spoken by the simple trucker were so powerful that even after the long gap of so many years , these expressions beckon me to look for some spark within, get up and get going again towards my dream and the destination.

10

We have had very encouraging comments on the post of the last week and I must thank each one of you for helping me take the discussions further.
But some of our friends have posed very valid questions too. Their question reads “it’s true that the spark is needed but some times the ignition just fails to work. One knows it’s needed but one doesn’t know how to ignite the inner fire and this is the situation faced by so many. Self motivation is rare to find; so many extraneous forces make it impossible”
I had asked the transporter friend the same thing, many years ago and will quote his response verbatim for every one’s benefit and didaction. Here is what he had said, “even the vehicle does not know that it has been built with so much of inherent strength. Left on its own it will never ever start; forget covering the milestones in its life time. Its power needs to be revved up with a positive catalystic interaction with the external forces. While it is true that the engine and ignition system of the vehicle are the internal parts of the vehicle you need the external powerful fuel to add power to the innate muscle”.
Human Life is run on similar doctrine. We have all been empowered with the self-righteous soul and the smart thinking power that can make the massive great seas, sky touching mountains and the vast desserts looked dwarfed in our presence. But all this will happen when this great soul of ours is empowered with a strong and steely willpower. While some may make the positive use of the willpower and achieve the glorious heights, some of us succumb to the weaker momentary negatives and give up to the unhelpful forces of our lives.
The positive impact can come into our life by any mean and at any stage of our life. It can be a solemn oath to prove to your self that you can do any thing. It could also be sometimes to show it back to the people who matter the most in our life or it could even be due to the pessimistic abrasions that you would have had in life due to heartbreaking or shocking experiences. By deciding that we have to demonstrate it in any which way, we have taken the first step of empowering our self. It could though still be a long journey to the wish fulfillment.
But mere empowering of the self may not be enough to win the race to the objective. We need to give power along with to all those mechanism and people too who would become influential and supportive in our reaching the future goals in our life. This is like what my transporter friend had advised, “The spark so generated by the turning of the ignition key creates potential power in the fuel that activates the engine and all its pistons start functioning. The automotive force generated in the engine passes on the activity to the main bearing attached to the shaft driving the wheels and the vehicle picks up speed depending on whether it is a front wheel drive or a rear wheel drive “.
In the similar fashion we need to pass on the energy of empowerment to all our week and strong links in our life to make sure all these contribute to the greater cause of our life which is that of attaining our magnificent heights. Mahatma Gandhi would not have been a mahatma had the people he met in life, not been empowered by him with the thoughts and preaching of Satya- Agraha and non violence. Lord Jesus Christ became a leader of men and women because he had empowered all of his followers and faithful by spreading the empowerment of love and the power of forgiving amongst mankind.
We need to understand a simple mathematical equation that, all zeroes written behind the figure of numerical one do not have any numerical values whereas if we start writing these zeroes after we have written the power of one they all become powerful as the figure of one has now passed on all its powers to the zeroes appearing in front of it”. (Mathematicians pl. excuses me for this layman’s definition). The task is to make all the zeroes of our life make contributors to our getting up and get going .

11

“Kapoor, I’ve got wonderful news to share with you. Puri had been fired early this morning. He had been called to the managing director’s chambers at 9.00 in the morning and handed over the pink slip. I have just been given this good news from my boss about Puri, whose second in command spoke to my boss instantly after Puri had come out of the top office”, shouted Chawla on the phone lines . He sounded very jubilant on the telephone lines. .
Puri was our super sales manager who had been hired a year ago to steer the company safely out of the de-growth vortex that had set in into the system due to poor handling of the team by the earlier manager( who currently has been acting as number two to Puri) ). He’d possibly played this match to put down the new incumbent and regain his lost glory. That he had tried this was the most well known fact all over the company but no one expected it to happen so soon. It was also known to the managing director that the entire team of the company was tied for most of the time in war games of one up- man ship. Even though the company had missed the last two quarters’ targets, he somehow believed that either of the fighting group will have the talent to pull the company up and show some improvement.
The team also believed that they had a far better capability and the talent pool than any other organization in the trade yet…..somewhere they had failed to click.
Such a situation is common to most of the organizations with people getting scared of losing their jobs and losing their sense of balance and team spirit.
How bad can that further become? I wonder. Certainly not life threatening, but definitely many careers will be put on the scaffolds given the current scenario of mistrust prevailing amongst the top positions of the not so enlightened business organizations..
In our pervious write up we had spoken about the distribution of power created by the lightening of the spark. We had spoken about the empowerment of all those that we come in contact with to become catalysts in our realization of the great dreams .We, when looking at such situations however get convinced that it is very difficult for all of us to share the illusory powers that we get to wield due to our being in particular chair or position.
The process of spreading empowerment amongst other fellow beings is not an easy task. The world plagued by the uncertainties of recessionary trends and the scare of losing jobs and earnings for the day, is facing tremendous competition between the peers, the boss and the subordinate, the organization and its executives handling it. We have in all manners left behind the spirit of hand holding. The race is on to outdo each other in pleasing every boss that happens to be one or two levels above and then pull down the same B—– through the back biting, letting down in tasks allotted and with the hope to, catch the next promotion ladder. Office politics has become a dirty arena of ensuring that it is the neighbor perched on the adjoining table, or sitting in the next cabin that must go first. We also tend to believe that his going most probably could save our physical self even though my soul may go to hell.
The process of empowering others involves sensitivity. It involves being more social, more acceptable and more yielding in our approach to each other .However in the race to ensure self gratification, who thinks of a neighbor, a subordinate or a team member.
Individuals have been trained to look for support and dependence right from childhood when they are taught to walk by clutching on to the finger offered as an aid .As grown ups too we obviously welcome such extended fingers and it is seldom that we will bite the finger that helps us stand up on our two feet. It is this gratitude that earns us the social acceptability and in turn extends the spark of empowerment to the dependent.
A selfless share of power with the attitude of making others share their grievances and grief, and fears and apprehensions can earn many a smiles back to us for our own happiness. We can imagine the positivity that spreads around when there is a smile observed on every face sitting in the room, we occupy to dispense our daily tasks.
Physically every man after a certain age can take care of his own needs, but it is cerebrally that he needs external interaction and stimulant to grow. Let us make it our task to give everyone who we come across the same stimulant. This process has our own selfish interest involved into it. Do we also not need the same stimulant from some other source? If so why not get the same back from our own people by developing good healthy human relationships, understanding levels and a sense of camaraderie.In the next write up we will focus on as to what is it that can make us not only good leaders but also good companions and human beings to help each one of us get up and get going.

12

You can not impress people by saying “I will do this”. You do this and let them be stunned. Life lived in postponement is no life. It becomes like a cheque of billions of dollars in pocket that can not be en-cashed. The best method of getting the best out of your life is to create. You must dream, desire and create. Let the fantasy become the reality by dreaming, visualizing and attaining. The dreams have always been the harbinger of development of the society. Some one dreamed of flying and we have an aircraft, someone else dreamt of an automobile and we have cars of all kind. Some one else dreamt scaling the Mount Everest and we have the human potential being utilized to it’s fullest.
We must let the dreams become blue prints of our life. The dreams will lead us to our real and desired places in life provided we take care of our dreams and bring them up the way we rear our children and make them better citizens of this wonderful world. Let us decide our route to our desired destination today by adopting the following tough steps for each one of our souls
1. A tougher introspection will help;
• Ask yourself where am I currently
• What do I want to accomplish in near future- distant future
• Do I enjoy what I am doing
• How do I make it enjoyable if I do not
2. Begin today with a solid dream list:
• Write as many dreams as possible
• Let your fancy take the front seat
• Forget about your limitations which are only earthly
• Imagine you have all the power to realize the dream list
3. Search for partners in your dreams realization:
• Let you family become a partner
• Let your coworkers become a partner
• Let your boss/junior become a partner for your dreams
• Share as many dreams as possible
• You never know who might be carrying the torch for you to guide you to the other end of the tunnel
4. Select four major goals for the current year
• Personal goal
• Work/ professional goal
• Relationship objective
• Financial objective
Let us understand if any of your dreams match that objective or lead to that objective- then stay focused.
5. Develop an action plan for each goal so identified by you
• Establish a schedule for each goal
• Anticipate trade offs
• Prioritize trade offs
• Strategize milestones
• Share with important people partners
• Start walking, enjoying breathers on the way
6. Let each goal be the contributor to your life’s growth plan
• What do I want to achieve in my life
• Do these goals meet my value orientation
• What is my own value perception
• What is my value destination
• Will these goals take me there
• How do I get to reach there
7. Taking charge of self
• Each day contains 24 hours only
• Design life growth plan to fit into 24 hours
• Have a healthy mix of fun and work in these 24 hours
• Prioritize fun and work
• Learn to say no to frivolities
• Punctualise yourself to save on time
• Develop a time plan for the day
• Choose and act as the plan directs
• Five practice strategies will help
Write a diary and carry it along
Write down new demand coming up
Accord priority for any thing new coming up
Set a new deadline for its completion
Plan the day daily to accommodate deviation
We all need to reach our dream destination and a little planning in life can take us closer to fulfillment of our desires. let us all get up and get going …..

13

Inertia – the route to killing self
I am tempted to quote verbatim the comments made by one of my blog readers
“Plans are nice to read, but difficult to get done. World is not so smooth place to live-in; external factors are always there to crumble your internal wishes! Particularly in this materialistic world, financial hurdles don’t allow common people (like me) to achieve our dreams. One may say, we have no guts to achieve what we dream. But at the end of the day, when I think of spending sometime in blogging or reading an interesting book a sense of job insecurity creeps into my mind spoiling all other interest” .
Death of human physical being is certain. It has its fixed time, place and the manner. It can come through accident, disease, destruction and even destiny. But many a times we tend to invite an untimely blow of sudden death to our souls and inner selves. That happens when we stop growing instead we start the downward spiral of mental de- growth. We lose not only interest in every thing around us but we also end up distancing ourselves from our desired for and intended goals in our life. This may happen because we have lost interest in surroundings around us or it may happen since we are tempted to opt for the security of our cushy jobs and the perks attached to it. But the worst situation comes when we do no take any initiative because of the fear of the unknown. A look at the reasons for inactivity and its systems will help here to understand our very own personalities and the gimmicks we indulge into to accept the death of intellect for future growth.
Our inertia causes downward growth when we:
• Leave decisions of our life to others
• Always complain about the lack of time
• Always complain about lack of resources
• Always complain about lack of opportunities
• Get irritated for non achievements
• Can not find any topic of interest to discuss with friends/ family
• Simply talk of doing great things
• Sleep either more or less than necessary
• Avoid career discussions
The way to self realization is replete with many challenges and rewards. Challenges to understand and synergize our strengths and weakness to either thwart the threats and or also to en-cash and en-value the opportunities. This can come only when we make all efforts to take out some time for our own self development.
I am reminded of the famous words of Dov Frohman when he says “every leader should routinely keep a substantial portion of his or her time—I would say as much as 50 percent—unscheduled. … Only when you have substantial ’slop’ in your schedule—unscheduled time—will you have the space to reflect on what you are doing, learn from experience, and recover from your inevitable mistakes. Leaders without such free time end up tackling issues only when there is an immediate or visible problem”.
We get stuck up in the rut of ordinary routine when we refuse to take out time for ourselves. We must take out time to reflect and think as to which way we can improve our lives, our mental ability, our leadership qualities, our positive yet differentiating strengths to keep us ahead from the others in the race to self realization. Every day at the end of the day we must reflect as to what happened during the course of the day. We must examine in the process whether the experience has been a positive gain or a negative abrasion. Such critical analysis of experiencing will make us imbibe the positive within us for future enjoyments and the negatives will either be left behind or accumulated for future corrections.
Only a very conscious effort made to learn from our experiences and mistakes can open the path to the progress and make us effective leaders. Let us begin this today itself by asking ourselves very basic and simple questions:
• What was my today intended for?
• Did I do what I had planned?
• Did I achieve what was I trying to achieve?
• What had contributed to this achievement?
• What could I not achieve and why?
• Is the non achievement any way affecting my life’s long term plans?
• In what way is my non achievement affecting others?
• What can be the long term / short term affects (positive or negative) for me and others?
• Can I do the same thing differently next time?
• Can I do any thing to improve upon whatever I did today?
• Can I make my family, colleagues, co-workers, friends, partners in this route to improvement?
Our introspective reflections will bring forth the positive thoughts amongst others too, whose opinions do count for us and who can be instrumentals/ motivators in helping us get up and get going in a mo

Matters of Mind and Heart -reaching Emotional Stability and Life Balance

Much has been written by thinkers, philosophers, scientists, sages and preachers on the subject of mind and heart. There has been endless research on the issue of restless mind and spirit of human beings, yet the peace still eludes many of us. The world still suffers from many diseases of the mind and heart. Words like depression, anxiety, stress and phobic disorder, mental disorder, behavioral disorder are being used like the common place flu and colds happening to ordinary people. The medical world abounds by all kinds of medicines and treatments, offering little respite to those who suffer. People continue to suffer .Their restless minds and souls are constantly being tormented. Through the columns of these pages we will try to understand how do we establish better understanding of these matters of mind and heart to reach emotional stability in our lives and keep our lives balanced.

We humans are connected with the organic world with the most developed brain and thinking powers. In the organic world three kinds of living beings exist i.e., those that have the instinctual survival bereft of any emotions, those that survive only on the basis of their physical strength and display only momentary emotional awareness .Humans have been bestowed with the powers that can generate emotions in our system involuntarily and activate our thinking system whether we like it or not. We also have a fully developed mental perception, which can take cognizance of the matter and connect it to the events and consequences. We have a fully developed memory. We think, we imagine, we connect and we activate. Much as man would like to become thoughtless at times, sleep without any connection to the real world, the brain continues working either voluntarily but mostly involuntarily.

The involuntary emotional system activates our mind all the time. It forces the mind to imagine, to create and to dream. The dreams motivate us to plan which are executed by us to realize all those that we dreamt of. But in the law of our land where we have the thought, the power to dream and the power to reflect, we do have the situations that cause conflict and pain. For wherever there is a mind, the thought, the power to reflect, the analytical skill, there we have the conflict, the contradiction. No mental activity can ever be without the contradictory and opposite situation. Wherever we have the mind, we have the pain and we have the misery. Man however does not want to suffer. He wants to always be in comfort, in happiness and in the enjoyment of a happy life. This is a natural phenomenon .All living beings look for a life full of comforts. The inanimate only do not know the difference between the comfort and discomfort. The living beings who do not have a mind suffer only for a short while. Their sense of discomfort is only short lived, is unexpressed on account of lack of emotions . They do not consign their discomfort to their memory bank. Nor do they draw upon their memory bank to reflect and compare their current and past discomfort. But man being a thinking organic sensitive emotional mind feels, expresses, analyses ,compares and consigns all comforts and discomforts to his memory bank, thus in a way being always under the load of misery .

Can the mind be free from worries and miseries?

We are all part of the larger organic world in which we are all living beings like millions of other kinds of living being inhabiting the solar system. Our world in fact as compared to the world of other living beings of the universe is too small. We are very miniscule in numbers, barely a few trillions all over the globe. The other planets must be peopled with many more living beings which the science is continuously researching into. Whether those living beings too have similar emotions, thoughts, mind and heart developed like us, only the research will find out.

But humans of our dear earth are endowed with a developed mental faculty. we all think .Thinking ,reflecting is an activity of the mind. We remember, we consign our thoughts to memory bank. We imagine. We create thoughts. Creation of thoughts and imagination is a mental exercise. We plan larger things for our life by the strength of our imagination .We dream of things that are larger than our life. We aspire for making these dreams come true. we do realize some of these dreams, imagination, and aspirations yet many other remain out of reach .

In order to understand the malady that has befallen the modern mind we will have to know the functioning of the mind in the modern age .the modern times are the reflectors of the cerebral psychological problems. Every individual is involved fully into the mental day to day stresses of life. The involvement of the human mind into the cerebral problems becomes the major detriment to the peace and happiness of the human intellect. Every human being wants to become free of the mental stress that he is suffering from. We need to understand as to what mind is, in order to get liberated from the stresses and problems of the mind. Without really looking into the functioning of the mind it is simply irrelevant to solve the problems that exist in our psyche today.

I am tempted to quote verbatim the comments made by one of my blog readers

“Plans are nice to read, but difficult to get done. World is not so smooth place to live-in; external factors are always there to crumble your internal wishes! Particularly in this materialistic world, financial hurdles don’t allow common people (like me) to achieve our dreams. One may say, we have no guts to achieve what we dream. But at the end of the day, when I think of spending sometime in blogging or reading an interesting book a sense of job insecurity creeps into my mind spoiling all other interest” .

Death of human physical being is certain. It has its fixed time, place and the manner. It can come through accident, disease, destruction and even destiny. But many a times we tend to invite an untimely blow of sudden death to our souls and inner selves. That happens when we stop growing instead we start the downward spiral of mental de- growth. We lose not only interest in every thing around us but we also end up distancing ourselves from our desired for and intended goals in our life. This may happen because we have lost interest in surroundings around us or it may happen since we are tempted to opt for the security of our cushy jobs and the perks attached to it. But the worst situation comes when we do no take any initiative because of the fear of the unknown. A look at the reasons for inactivity and its systems will help here to understand our very own personalities and the gimmicks we indulge into to accept the death of intellect for future growth.

Our inertia causes downward growth when we:

Leave decisions of our life to others

Always complain about the lack of time

Always complain about lack of resources

Always complain about lack of opportunities

Get irritated for non achievements

Can not find any topic of interest to discuss with friends/ family

Simply talk of doing great things

Sleep either more or less than necessary

Avoid career discussions

The way to self realization is replete with many challenges and rewards. Challenges to understand and synergize our strengths and weakness to either thwart the threats and or also to en-cash and en-value the opportunities. This can come only when we make all efforts to take out some time for our own self development.

I am reminded of the famous words of Dov Frohman when he says “every leader should routinely keep a substantial portion of his or her time—I would say as much as 50 percent—unscheduled. … Only when you have substantial ’slop’ in your schedule—unscheduled time—will you have the space to reflect on what you are doing, learn from experience, and recover from your inevitable mistakes. Leaders without such free time end up tackling issues only when there is an immediate or visible problem”.

We get stuck up in the rut of ordinary routine when we refuse to take out time for ourselves. We must take out time to reflect and think as to which way we can improve our lives, our mental ability, our leadership qualities, our positive yet differentiating strengths to keep us ahead from the others in the race to self realization. Every day at the end of the day we must reflect as to what happened during the course of the day. We must examine in the process whether the experience has been a positive gain or a negative abrasion. Such critical analysis of experiencing will make us imbibe the positive within us for future enjoyments and the negatives will either be left behind or accumulated for future corrections.

Only a very conscious effort made to learn from our experiences and mistakes can open the path to the progress and make us effective leaders. Let us begin this today itself by asking ourselves very basic and simple questions:

What was my today intended for?

Did I do what I had planned?

Did I achieve what was I trying to achieve?

What had contributed to this achievement?

What could I not achieve and why?

Is the non achievement any way affecting my life’s long term plans?

In what way is my non achievement affecting others?

What can be the long term / short term affects (positive or negative) for me and others?

Can I do the same thing differently next time?

Can I do any thing to improve upon whatever I did today?

Can I make my family, colleagues, co-workers, friends, partners in this route to improvement?

Our introspective reflections will bring forth the positive thoughts amongst others too, whose opinions do count for us and who can be instrumentals/ motivators in helping us get up and get going in a more constructive approach for future accomplishment.

In my last write up I had made a reference to presence of Elphi in our heart and mind that prevent us from shedding the fears inherited by our past misfortunes and negative experiences. The fear of losing gets steeped into our inner psyche and inhibits us from acting boldly. I had actually met Elphi in my city while it was walking on the roads. The huge pachyderm with its massive built and bulk had been ridden by a frail and emaciated looking mahout, who would once in a while poke the animal with his ankus as he prodded him to behave in the midst of chaotic traffic on the road.

More recently, these same methods were also witnessed by me in a circus where the trainer had traumatized the captured big wild predator lion to perform certain acts, which otherwise this Panthera Leo would have made a man to perform before it actually ate him up. Any how we were discussing about the Elphi, our dear friend and representative of the great lord. My animal lovers’ instinct told me to speak to Elphi and ask him as to what he had been doing in a town and why he was not in a jungle uprooting trees with his trunk or getting into any other kind of elephantine game to entertain himself because that is what a young elephant is supposed to do .

The massive mammal stopped by for a while, looked at me as if he had been sizing me up and then he glanced at the mahout who had been riding him. The elephant assured that the mahout did not have the ankus in his hands, spoke in a conspiratorial tone to me, “you seem to be a man with a very low wisdom. Do you not see that this man who is sitting on top of me carries a weapon that is mighty powerful than my entire bulk. Will he not kill me if I try to save myself and run away to jungle? Please do not ask me to do anything that could be detrimental to my health”.

“But you are so powerful, strongly built and muscular looking. This man who is riding you is only a small creature. you can throw him off your back with one little push of your trunk and may be crush him if he tries to stop you from running away to the jungle”‘, I had told the elephant while at the same time I had been motivating him to get free from the slavery of labor and toil in the town. I had wanted him to regain his lost freedom and respectability. The elephant who had been behaving in a very meek fashion under the mahout looked at me very apologetically as if he had been trying to feel sorry for his own condition.

“You can share your story with me if you want to”, I told him, and “it is possible I may be able to help you”.

“Well if you are keen to “, said the elephant to me, “but you will have to crawl along with me through this grueling traffic. I find it difficult to raise my voice for the fear of the punishment that will be awarded to me for blowing my natural trumpet in this town inhabited by humans”.

“Of course I will walk along “, I encouraged him.

“you see when I was a very small and innocent baby elephant I used to be a free bird oops sorry ….a free elephant like any other of my brethren in a jungle. I used to enjoy my pranks and baby elephant games with mud and water. I would sprinkle water over my body and then lie down into mud to again cover myself with dust so that my mother could shower more water on me with her trunk. I just loved all such mischiefs as it gave me a chance to listen to sweet admonishments of my elephant parents. But life had not been such kind to me for long. One day some friends of this mahout had come to jungle hunting for the ivory teeth and trunks of elephants. They killed lots of my relatives to gather huge catch of ivory and elephant bones. I really do not know why you humans like the bones and teeth of dead animals. Any how I really never will never understand. Perhaps someday my bones will also be ……” he left the sentence midway.

“but we were discussing about your parents “, I had wanted him to continue.

“Yes, yes, let me speak”, “My parents were also amongst those killed by the gun tottering friends of this mahout. My life however had been spared by them as I did not carry enough bones in my body and teeth in my mouth. They just bundled me into a van, after they had put me into strong iron chains, and brought me to your town. Thereafter whenever I had raised my trumpet to tell them that I wanted to go back to, my own home in the forest, they would beat me with this ankus on my forehead. This thing really hurts. Even the thought reminds me of the pain that this ankus can inflict. In addition the iron fetters that these people had tied to my tiny elephantine feet would hurt me whenever I had tried to free myself from the pole to which I had been secured.

‘Yes that happened when you were very young. Today when you have grown so big and you have a massive body and built, you can certainly get yourself freed from this slavery and go back to the place where you belong”, I talked to him in a very sympathetic mode.

“My friends from jungle also say so. But you have to understand that the fear of the ankus and the iron fetters hurting my ankles had settled deep into my heart and mind during my childhood days. The horror so settled in my brain has altered my very basic personality. I am no more an elephant even though I do look like one to you. I am happy with the state in which I had been forced to live from my enslaved childhood. Please do not disturb me any further ‘, Elphi had been trying to hide his tears of pain and sufferings.

“But let me share a secret with you”, he brought his trunk closer to my ears, as if he did not want anyone else to become privy to this secret. “I am not alone in this town. I find many of my creeds living into the very heart and minds of all the human beings in this town”.

“Well but that is impossible. I do not see any other of your creed in here and then how is it possible that such enormous living beings can get into the hearts and minds of us humans without anyone ever noticing them. You must be just befooling me”, I laughed aloud at the statement recently uttered by Elphi.

“NO I am serious. You humans carry the symbolic self created Elphis in your minds, the same way I have adopted my terror of fetters and ankus from my childhood. You get befuddled by one negative experience in your life and give up trying the same thing further. You too have taken to all kinds of negativity and self denial from the early childhood. The ghosts of past bad experiences always haunt your mankind with the result that the humans are never able to disassociate themselves from the fearful complexes .These apprehensions and doubts on your own capability given to you during your childhood and parentage, become colossal Elphis when you grow up physically , though mentally you still remain steeped in your self- woven anxieties . I think you should first try to emancipate your own creed from the massive elephants that occupy their thinking and doing faculty and then possibly I should also move out of this town and go back to my forest abode, till then let me enjoy the company of the Elphis living within all of you’.

I obviously had no reason to further cajole the biggest mammal living on the land. I knew the urgency was to ask my fellow beings to throw away the elephants of self doubt, the elephants of past bad baggage’s, the elephants of some negativity experienced in life earlier and get up and get goingwith a renewed vigor and self determination to follow and realize the dreams of their lifetimes.

Do we really remember how often had we fallen when we learnt to crawl, walk and then run in our childhood? Most probably not because we had all along been focusing on the organic growth of our lives when we moved from infancy to childhood to young age. Each time we would fall while learning to pedal a bicycle, we would come back with a determination to succeed this time and eventually we learnt the tricks. Remember we would then enjoy the same trick of pedaling our tiny bicycles with both our hands free from the handles of the bicycle. But what kept us going after each fall was the encouragement we would get from the protective hands of our parents or elder brothers and sisters . Their pepping up always encouraged us to do better.

We now wonder as to where has this pep talk that could tell us to get up and get going vanished . Believe me it has not vanished anywhere. It exists today also . Possibly today it can be seen in the eyes of our young sons and daughters. Just look into their eyes and onto their confident faces when they see their parents fighting out the challenges of life with yet another strong determined mindset and bounce back after having had a set back in life. The support system of doing better once again can be found in the comforting words and gestures of the life partners and good friends when they tell you to forget the vagaries of life and try an alternative route that could take you to greater glory of success.

I once saw a convoy of ants moving in a very disciplined manner in a straight line to their hive. The ants were lead by the leader of the pack and they were all running to reach the comfort of their hive after a day’s hard work . They were clutching small tit bits into their tiny mouths, to be hidden away from the other predators. Out of sheer curiosity and to check whether I could disturb and dissuade the disciplined run of ants’ convoy I just sprinkled a few drops of water on the floor . I had expected ants to give up going in the direction that they had been following.I was sure they would now get lost as the straight line that they had been following behind each other had been disturbed. But to my utter dismay all the ants instead of getting lost or dissuaded from their path became more determined to reach their destination. They would just take a detour away from the wet patch on the floor and rejoin their companions who had moved ahead of them . A few of the ants even climbed the wall high up to avoid the water thrown by me on their route and after covering a good height will climb down to join the straight line of their friends moving forward.

Life beckons us to move ahead in the same way. Come highs or come lows the route to glory should never be abandoned .We must find a detour every time we come across the obstacles and continue our journey to the destination. There are enough support systems available who tell us to get up once again and get going. The caring hands of God the Almighty are always with us to protect us from any fall that we might comprehend or be apprehensive of. Let us just get up and get going. Success is just round the corner……..may be just a step ahead.